Armed for Greatness

Have you ever wondered how something – a message, a picture or a video – goes viral on social media? Have you ever shared a link and thought to yourself: ok, this campaign started all the way in Sao Paolo but how did it reach me here in Beirut?

Social media has its own surreal power. Let’s take the Strip for Jackie campaign that took Lebanon by storm a few months ago. Half-naked individuals were pledging their support to skier Jackie Chamoun in quite an unusual way and although no one really wanted to see all that nudity (or hairy chests) flood their timeline, we all found out about the campaign. It was everywhere! And as it turned out, the very first person who started it all did not even know nor predict that it would be this big and get featured on international news outlets.

Social media can be quite unpredictable in that way yet what we receive as information is at most times, not accidental. With the right strategy, your message may catch the same kind of fire. Prior to the success and spread of an intended social media campaign, lots of trials-and-errors take place, plenty of research goes into our habits and specialized teams work hard put those strategies to work.

As part of my Social Media internship at One Wig Stand, we had a specialist from Eastline Marketing come in to provide a presentation on Social Media Strategy customized to the NGOs work. Jennifer Kanaan, a nutritionist-turned-social media specialist at Eastline Marketing, shared her experience and insight on Social Media Strategies. She started by explaining the different steps of developing social media strategy, different factors to consider (like the time of day to post) and how it is very important to have a set goal.

Her presentation covered all the aspects of social media and she pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of each of the tools (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) in delivering a message. She emphasized how important it is for us to have personalized content and the more visuals, the better! The simplest of content can sometimes draw in more viewers and what we may see as ordinary might be of great importance to someone else. For it is true what they say “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. It’s important to be open-minded in such cases and focus on the message or response you aim to get.

Jennifer’s detailed presentation left us with plenty of things to think about and we’re now especially eager to put our strategic plans into action having seen the potential. We cannot thank Jennifer and Eastline Marketing enough for their support and wonderful presentation!